(3) Pulling Faces - Grown so ugly

{Portraits without series get pointless stories without ends}

 

‘I was surprised, I was happy for a day, in 1975’

 

It's 2am on a Friday night. I’m in a dingy corner of a dingy nightclub, sweat is dripping from the walls, the DJ is playing the 4th interminable Belle and Sebastian track of the night and worst of all, my beer is broken. What I want to be is drunk and somewhere else instead of here and sober. No, what I want to be is very drunk and anywhere else rather than this sweaty wee room that is trying to pass itself off as a den of iniquity.

 

I’m crouched in this corner alone. My friends are either engrossed in conversations with people I don’t know and don’t care to know or are bopping their schmindie little bops on the crowded dance floor. God knows how they do it. There is a time and a place for such music but the pulse and sway of a late night crowd is not. So, as I said, I’m sitting alone, in silence, staring at this malfunctioning beverage and wondering why I come to this god awful club week after week after week.

 

My flat being just across the road is one reason. What else? Well, my friends seem to enjoy it and if I’m honest with myself, I have some flawed hope that repetition of deed will engender some soggy form of camaraderie between me and them. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that buzz of ownership, of belonging to anything. Gone are the days of linking arms with friends and foes alike, of climbing on the stage to whirl in abandon to the force of my favourite new tune.

 

Sadly, for the umpteenth night, I feel nothing of the sort. I feel the opposite if I’m honest. The more often I come here and the more familiar the faces become, the more profoundly I feel that stolid lump of sadness swell up in my chest. I so want to be part of all of this. I so want to feel my feet crashing down on that dance floor, to see nothing but those flashing lights and dry ice, to hear nothing more than that next, wonderful tune. But I can’t. I don’t feel it and I can never lose myself in it. So instead I sit here in my sodden corner wondering where else on this world I could possibly go.

 

Home is always an option. Or at least it would be if those grey walls and quiet rooms didn’t provide such a dank welcome. It doesn’t matter if I’m there alone or if she comes around, it’s been a while since it felt like an escape or even a home. So instead I sit here, spinning out my weekends like some sad sack character from a Smiths tune. Back turned on the crowd, my eyes fixed on the floor and my head tuning it all out to nothing.

 

‘I’m going to write the song, that makes Israel and Palestine get along’

 

From the outside, Glasgow has this great indie scene. Every year at least one group stumble together a collection of songs that have nothing to do with the Glasgow I know and send them spinning across the world. Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura, The Twilight Sad, The Phantom Band, Franz Ferdinand, The Vaselines, Frightened Rabbit and on goes the list. It's commendable and I would never change it, but I do wonder how and why I have come to float around on its periphery. This nightclub is where the indie kids come for their weekly baptism of sweat and beer. This is where the collaborations are formed and the big boys, the ones that made it, can come to switch off from the wider world.

 

Here is a place where everybody knows your name, and yes, they are always glad you came, if only so they can feel that frisson of dancing to a Franz Ferdinand track with someone from the very same band. Here is where people aren’t just friends, they’re band mates. They are gangs and groups of knowing, oddly smug scenesters who know that, if they can just nail that elusive tune, that the roads outside are paved with tweed, chord and fanzine adulation.

 

‘What do I get, ohoooohoh, what do I get?’

 

The thing is though, I don't write songs, I can't play guitar and am the sprawling embodiment of arrhythmic. My musical ambition stretches to learning all the words to Wichita Lineman and maybe, just maybe, getting into jazz. What’s more, my hair is bluntly drab and lacks the irksome foppish flop that is in permanent fashion. And as for my clothes, well, I own a few chord jackets and have been known to frequent second hand shops from time to time but let’s just say that I have no intention of ensnaring what I consider vital organs into jeans that cling quite so tight.

 

Yet here I am, once again suffering a night in the National Pop League. It's the cities prima indie club where the wannabes and the never will be’s strut their swaying strut alongside the already made it. This tiny room with its bar queue and its sweating walls is the fizzing catalyst for all that spins out of this city in the way of music and song. Here is a club so full of emoting young writers and sensitive new guitar heroes that if you cut the power I swear you would here the quiet hum of a hundred unwritten songs, each one gestating inside their genteel new parent’s mind quietly waiting for the right person to unlock that particularly Glasgow combination of fop and rock from it’s unsung shackles.

 

‘Stay out super late tonight, picking apples, making pie’

 

I have no problem with this world. I admire it in a way. Here in this sweaty old social club, happy, like minded people congregate to sweat and sway their night away. What is it to me if they seek out individuality with a myriad of slanting, awkward fringes that all look the bloody same. Where is the harm if the room is packed with a prosaic parade of vintage clothes and tweed under-wear? No, there is no harm in any of this. I’ve already said that if I could lose myself in it, that this would be a moment of some not inconsiderable joy.

 

After all, here is a ready made world of make believe. Of big smiles when you see your little friends. Of cheering when your mate’s band get a gig. Of working behind the bar while you wait for your big break and of knowing where the party is without ever being told.

 

That’s the story anyway. Sometimes though, if you look closely enough, if you maybe catch a sly glance in a sweaty mirror or see a momentary drop of someone’s sensitive demeanour, that’s when you see a world where inspiration has been replaced by aspiration. The door, for this generation at least, was opened by Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura and Mogwai. Behind them the rest are forming a disorderly queue.

 

‘Dance, dance, dance to the radio’

 

From my corner, I see a lot of this. I watch the interactions and the mingling out there. At its best, it looks like stilted posing, at its worst; you watch the horror that is a networking session for the indie crowd.

 

Tonight I’m feeling especially bitter. Maybe it’s this defiant pint and it’s ineffective alcohol content, or maybe it’ sitting here watching all the jolly japes that pass for fun in here. Why don’t they see that this is a snide labyrinth of cliques and groups? What I see are people who profess to be sensitive and open minded who wander around in a politely vicious world of sniping and backbiting. I see all those girls who flirt with cold eyes and all those guys who flash you sharp smiles while they wait patiently to **** your friend.

 

It's a veneer I can't help but want to snap every time I see it, but what's the point? It's there, it's harmless and after all, I chose to be here. And anyway, if I could climb beneath its protective cover, wouldn’t I do just that? I’ve sought comfort in other patterns and places, I’ve sought comfort from the stability of her but it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

 

‘Trudging slowly over wet sand’

 

The third Morrissey track of the evening comes on. Have you ever tried to dance to the likes of 'Suedehead'? I have and it’s hell. Whatever innate sense of beat that lies within us all rebels against the jangling, verbose outpourings of our bequiffed hero and you find yourself jerking across the floor looking all the world like a drunk mannequin.

 

Tonight of all nights I’m even less inclined to repeat this feat. I'm tired. Very tired, and Mr Morrissey is not the man to shift my bones of an early morning. My eyes sag with grit and weight. My face, even in the pallid disco lights is pale and drawn. I used to be able to sit through the most drawn out nights with a ready made smile and a fidgeting sense of fun. Not in here and not tonight. It's starting to feel like I've grown old, or at least grown out of all of this. I look around me. The dance floor still bops to that polite beat, the sweat that lines the room now marks everyone's brow and all around me. These people are laughing, happily and cynically lost on the other side of the veneer. Well, everyone apart from her that is.

 

‘Maybe lily does the Astro’

 

She has been looking at me all night. Looking but never smiling. If I was being more accurate, I would say she had been staring with an aggressive scowl. Surveying both me and the rest of this room with a cynicism I can relate to all too readily. I meet her eye for a moment and try to express some level of communion about our shared disdain for this night. She looks away and frowns some more and with that I am locked into the inescapable rules of attraction. She doesn’t want me and thus, I must have her.

 

I shift my seat slightly and shout some mind clogging line about the music. Befitting the low rate comedy I’ve just shat out of my mouth she raises an eyebrow, looks me up and down with her dark eyes and sighs. I grab for my pint and swill some more of it down my mouth. It’s part sweat, part beer and all warm by now but all previous insults are off, I need it’s help.

 

‘Come on, come on, you think you drive me crazy’

 

What would I have done before, on a good night? Before I became a corner hugging bore? Would I have gone up to talk to her again? Would I f*ck, that’s suicide of the pride that is. I’ve never, ever chosen the shuffling sacrifice of ego that is trying to dance with a girl, that’s the post nuclear option I felt the need for a more effective beer, or beers or a cold, straight vodka. The 30 person bar queue meant this was unlikely to be implemented before closing time. . I sat back defeated.

 

Us Scottish lads, for all our noise and flustered bluster are shy types deep down. Just at the beginning of this night some of us had gathered together to agree which girls we were definitely too frightened to speak to. A shameless show I admit, but better the companionship of the pathetic than the solitude of a romantic kicking.

 

It's an odd thing though, I’ve never really needed to do the chasing, in the past I've usually relied upon (and rarely been let down by) the 'let them come to you' strategy. I would claim with no ego to be of reasonable attractiveness and too many years in my sisters company meant that I project well as the elusive understanding, sensitive male. For reasons that remain baffling, there was always a certain kind of girl who would fall for this. The more you outlined that you genuinely weren't interested in shallow liaisons, the more they would crave one with you. I can't claim to have the highest success ratio in town, but this odd combination of effete conversation and semi-celibate announcements had more benefits than negatives.

 

All of that though was before the fall out that has dogged me this past year. That was back then before I had these lines on my face and bad thoughts in my mind. These days that easy chat and subtle shifting of melancholy eyes which made such a heady mix has been replaced by stultifying mundane blathering and the genuinely scary twitches of sadness that rippled across my face. My chest is too laden down with the recent past to allow me the air needed to leaven conversation with jokes and quiet questions.

 

 

‘I’m calling your name, don’t let me blow up or honk it all up’

 

So here I am, in this club I don’t like with these people I can’t stand trying for no reason to communicate with this girl I don’t know.

 

I sink back into my corner to consider my loss. Not just her, but all of this. I have to decide when all this light and noise just stopped meaning something to me. Maybe I have to admit to myself that I just don't get lost in music the way I did before, I just don't have the energy to chase or be chased by a girl and worst of all, whatever it was that once made me attractive was gone. I’ve grown so ugly, in outlook and in looks and I never ever noticed. I’m little more than a staid, worn down nobody in a comfortable rut that can no longer lose himself in the simplest of pleasures. Now I am nowhere and it’s now.

 

Is this how it happens? One day you're something, the next nothing? Have I really become tired of life and tired in looks? Grown so ugly and I never even noticed.

 

‘Oooooohhhhhaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhah!

 

'You look tired' it’s her! She is sitting right across from me, speaking to me. Her harsh look still unwavering, but there she was, sitting right across from me.

 

'Yeh, I'm pretty tired, I guess' is my coruscating opening line. Brilliant, fucking brilliant, I am the great seducer, watch me work.

 

'I think it looks sexy’ she says and with a straight face. I think she means it. I am staring back at her, it is all I can do.

 

‘I like men who look like that, worn out, tired. It turns me on'. She looks into my eyes with what I hope is intent and then sits back.

 

Saying nothings seems better than any of the below par drivel that is whirling through my mind. I shall swig my beer, an act that could be construed as cool defiance if my hand hadn't started shaking. She is slouching coolly in her chair as insouciant as they come, but her leg moves across until it is gently touching mine. Her scowl continues to scan the room but it never falls on me anymore.

 

I know what she is seeing, I see the same thing. The DJ plays the Hidden Cameras 'Smells like Happiness' and I want to sing, I want to sing so fucking loudly that I'll drown out the PA. I may have grown so ugly in so many ways, but as long as she's sitting there, as long as that song is playing and as long as this beer is going down as well as this, I've still got something to smile about.

 

I look around the room once again. People are dancing to the tune, singing to the whooping, wailing chorus without a care. Sweat drips from the mirror ball and onto their faces, sweat drips down my forehead and into my tired, vibrant eyes. There is so much wrong with what is about to happen. Tonight is a night that should not happen, she is someone I should move away from but, I can’t. Or to speak honestly, I won’t. Here and now is where those grey rooms gain some lustre, here is where I feel the beat of the music again, here is where I decide that I will reach out for a girl who is not and should not be mine. Here and now is where I know that I have grown so ugly in so many ways, and in this glowing moment, it feels so good.

 

 

 

Done